Pls, help a newb

[wawtwr]

Hello everyone,
just started a game. Read a manual and all. after few weeks I am still loosing money. I know everyone must go bust once or twice, but maybe someone can help.

1. set up HQ in Large city, where nobody is based.
2. Leased EMB-120's (two), and scheduled them to fly routes nobody else is operating. So far LF abot 55-60%.
3. Have two marketing campaigns (but decided to drop TV campaign)
4. Set CEO pay to 0.
5. I tried saving some $$ on number of office staff, but emediately started cancelling flights due to lack of perssonel, so now office staff is 100%.
6. Adjusted schedule, so that delays are no more than 10 min.
7. Lowered the price of tickets at the beggining (like the manual advised).

What else can I do? Load factors rose couple % last week, but not enough. Loosing about 250K a week.  at this tempo i will go bust in couple of months:( 

[Sigma]

Alright, got a couple questions:

1> What's the demand of the routes you're flying on?
2> A "few weeks" isn't exactly long enough for your RI to get built up.  What's your route image on those routes (Under the "Office" menu)?

It's fairly normal when flying smaller aircraft to lose money for a little while until you get your RI up.

[wawtwr]

All the routes i am flying have demand of 90/day or higher. Routes image is going up lately. now at +15-24. Company image is also going up and now stands at +20.

[Sami]

The organization / staff model for very small airlines is not very good yet, and I believe the best way to get out of the trouble is to expand..

[wawtwr]

And so I did. Now operating 4 EMB's, many new routes. Company image has reached over 40, some routes are almost 90. I raised prices, kept up with marketing campaigns , but.... still loosing money. Navigational fees and C-checks are killing me. Dont understand concept of nav fees. Some months they are lower, some much higher???

[maya666]

When you change a route you pay slot costs. these are added (once) to your navigational fees. So if you have a week were you change your routes a lot this can be very high. I believe it has also something to do with landingfee. if that is modeled in this gave.

[wawtwr]

I have not changed anything about my routes lately, but navigation fees can vary a lot week to week. One week it is 160K, another 15k?? Dont get it.

[Sami]

Those are the costs from airport slots when you open or edit routes. The steady -15k / week seem to be the normal costs of atc services / airport landing fee charges etc.


Anyway, I checked your airline and you seem to spend quite much on marketing compared to your other costs and incomes. Just cutting back 50% on marketing would make you profitable..

Also your routes/schedules are quite loose, you are not utilizing the aircraft very well. Some more flights could be squeezed in there.

[wawtwr]

thanks Sami

[ekaneti]

Hi:

Youre doing everything right EXCEPT ONE CRUCIAL THING: YOUR PLANES ARE TOO SMALL

You cant make money on anything under 70 seats in this game. One thing to minimize your losses would be to fly as many short routes as possible, such as under 200 NM. Short routes have much higher fares per mile than long routes do, and youll save on fuel. Plus youll get more trips per day without increasing your staff numbers and costs.

[ekaneti]

Oh yea, make sure when you lease a plane that C and D checks are as late in the future as possible